<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="UTF-8">
<title>On the Edge by devilangelsol</title>
<style type="text/css">

body { background-color: #ffffff; }
.CI {
text-align:center;
margin-top:0px;
margin-bottom:0px;
padding:0px;
}
.center   {text-align: center;}
.cover    {text-align: center;}
.full     {width: 100%; }
.quarter  {width: 25%; }
.smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
.u        {text-decoration: underline;}
.bold     {font-weight: bold;}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22777261">On the Edge</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilangelsol/pseuds/devilangelsol'>devilangelsol</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>TFP One-Shots [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Transformers - All Media Types, Transformers: Prime</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Death, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Predacons Rising (Prime Movie), Reincarnation, Sparkimus Prime, Sparks, There's A Tag For That, Till All Are One, Vague mentions of suicide idealization, Well of All Sparks, it's mostly angst tho, little bit of humour, the vehicons being vehicons</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 15:07:57</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,322</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22777261</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilangelsol/pseuds/devilangelsol</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-Movie.<br/>Two medics, both overworked trying to keep their patients functional, go to a burial ground, have a (mostly) one-sided conversation with their dead, and meet at their birthplace. As you do.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Breakdown &amp; Knock Out, Knock Out &amp; Ratchet (Transformers), Optimus Prime &amp; Ratchet</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>TFP One-Shots [3]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690219</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>On the Edge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The two Autobot ships were temporarily docked to the Nemesis while the Iaconian space port was being repaired.<br/>
<br/>
Well, the <em>Iron Will</em> was docked to it; the Jackhammer was small enough that Wheeljack had opted to simply park it on top of the warship, smack in the middle of the landing deck and causing all sorts of problems for air traffic. An eradicon-- one of the so-called "elite" swing-wingers, no less-- had somehow failed to notice the red, white and green eyesore in front of him and had glided right into it, and its pilot's ensuing eruption of profanity had driven the poor thing to hide deep in the Nemesis's bowels. It had taken forever for Knockout to find him and coax him out. <br/>
<br/>
The medic threw his hands up in a show of annoyance for an imaginary audience. Even after joining the 'Bots, most of the mechs who showed up in his medbay were ex-Decepticon troops, and he couldn't figure out whether it was because his new teammates still didn't trust him enough to let him get his claws in their internals, or because they just didn't get injured as often. <br/>
<br/>
The above incident made him suspect the latter. Slag, the troops really needed to get their sensors upgraded. And their fine motor-control systems. And their processors. And... probably everything, if he was to be honest with himself. They had been built as cannon fodder, after all, not for durability or intelligence.</p><p>(Sometimes, he wonders if his old faction would have won if they had).</p><p> </p><p><br/>
Ratchet transformed near the base of the Well and made the rest of his way up on foot. When he reached the edge, a spark rose up from its depths to meet him, as promptly as if it had been waiting for this moment (and perhaps it had). It circled around him once and settled in front of his faceplate, its red glow reflecting off his helm.<br/>
"You have to stop doing this," he forced, trying to ignore the pang in his chest. "We've restarted customized frame production, you know, and not just for the troops. Don't you want to live again?"<br/>
<br/>
The spark, of course, didn't answer. It simply bobbed up and down a little as it was buffeted by the wind.<br/>
Ratchet sighed and tore his optics away from it, fixing his gaze on the grey horizon instead. It hurt, having to remind himself that Optimus was gone for good, that this presence wasn't <em>him</em>. Seeing what was left of him, and wondering... but no. This was how it should be. Optimus wouldn't have wanted his trauma inflicted on anyone, especially not a newspark: it wouldn't be right to curse a child with the memories of millenia of war, and all that had been lost...<br/>
Part of him-- the professional, scientifically-minded part of him, the part that really wasn't as active recently as it should have been --wondered how the spark recognized him at all, given its lack of memory banks or a cache. <br/>
<br/>
Maybe it didn't. Perhaps it was just curious, and would have approached anyone who wandered close to the Well. <br/>
<br/>
(Orion had been curious that way, hadn't he?) <br/>
<br/>
<br/>
The little red ball of light made its way closer and settled on his shoulder. As a thing of pure energy, it was weightless, but its warmth lent it an illusion of corporeality. Ratchet folded under its non-weight until his chin rested on his forearm and his forearm on his knee, and still refused to look at it. <br/>
<br/>
(Perhaps this way he could pretend that this was him and Orion again, looking out at the flat expanse of the Rust Sea and its far-away storms. <br/>
He had never claimed to be entirely selfless, after all.)</p><p> </p><p>A thick cloud of fine dust passed overhead some time later, obscuring Luna 2's pink light. In the gloom, Ratchet became aware  that the spark on his pauldron wasn't glowing as brightly as it had been when it had first emerged. He turned to look at it worriedly. <br/>
<br/>
It <em>had</em> dimmed a bit; it was also vibrating and flickering intermittently, as if fighting some unseen force. The medic glanced at the yawning chasm at his back.<br/>
Ah, that explained why. It seemed like Optimus's stubborness did run spark-deep.<br/>
Shaking his head with a familiar sense of exasperation, he prodded it; the spark drifted off his shoulder, but didn't go any further.<br/>
<br/>
"Go on," he said gently. "This old bot will be all right. Worry about yourself for a change, for Primus's sake."<br/>
<br/>
It still seemed to hesitate, but nevertheless began to be drawn in by the Well's inexorable pull as its own power waned; he watched its progress with an odd mix of emotions.<br/>
<br/>
"Thank you," he whispered, right before the spark crossed the invisible event horizon and winked out of sight, plunged back into their planet's core.<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p><br/>
The medic stayed there for a while longer, aware of his shoulder plate cooling; he peered over the edge of the Well into the inky blackness. Was there and end to it? And if there was, was Optimus's empty frame lying at its bottom, surrounded by the remains of the great Primes of the past who had made his same sacrifice? What--<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
He had become so enthralled that he hadn't realised just how far he was leaning out, so when someone cleared his throat behind him, he nearly pitched himself headfirst into the abyss out of surprise. After an undignified scramble to right himself, he whirled around to see Knockout smirking up at him with a hand on his hip.<br/>
<br/>
"If you must follow our esteemed leader's example, at least do so when I'm on the other side of the planet and with a solid alibi. Wouldn't want our colleagues to think that I'm the one who pushed you off, now, would we?"<br/>
<br/>
Ratchet sent him a dirty look.<br/>
"I'll push <em>you</em> off one of these days," he muttered as he began his trek down the hill.<br/>
"But then who would help you recalibrate the Q squad's oscillators?"<br/>
<br/>
(The last time the two medics had seen the Qs, they had all somehow managed to dephase their transponder frequencies, each for a different value, after falling off some scaffolding. Given the speed at which the red medic had fixed them, Ratchet figured that this was something his coworker had had to do rather frequently.) <br/>
<br/>
He could <em>feel</em> himself aging. Fellow medic or not, Knockout was bad for his health. He stopped and tilted his head back, snide reply already on the tip of his tougue, but what he saw made any comment he had intended to make shrivel up and die.</p><p><br/>
The red mech was holding-- <em>holding</em>-- a spark in his hands, and his expression... it was the most serious he had ever seen him. <br/>
Ratchet got the feeling that he was intruding on something private, and so continued back down without saying a word. <br/>
<br/>
</p><p>He wouldn't ask, of course, but given its colour (orange, the colour of a healer) and the way the other kept it close, he could make a pretty good guess as to who it had once belonged to.</p><p>It was... odd, to think of how similar the two of them were.</p><p>Or maybe not so odd. Close to the Well of Allsparks, where they all had come from and where they would all return one day, had always been the place for these sorts of realizations.</p><p><br/>
"Hey."<br/>
Knockout was standing where he had left him, but he was looking at him now with naked vulnerability. Bathed in the orange glow of the spark he was still holding, he looked older and more frail than his actual age demanded (yet another strange revelation).</p><p>"You'll be fine."<br/>
Despite his tone, it felt like more of a question. <br/>
Ratchet suddenly felt a strong need to reassure him; he gave him-- them-- a crooked smile.<br/>
<br/>
"Yeah."</p><p>"Till all are one."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I've never written angst before, so this is new territory for me. Hopefully it wasn't TOO  cringy.</p><p>Yeah, I know that this theme has been done to death, but it's just so fascinating! Hopefully I managed to add something of my own to it. I just loved the idea so much.<br/>My actual starting point for this fic was this scene my extremely bored brain thought up while in class <em>months</em> ago, where a (human sized) Ratchet and Knockout are sitting on a sofa, swapping between some sort of strong alcoholic beverage and neapolitan ice cream, and talking about Optimus and Breakdown and how <em>good</em> they were while getting steadily drunker and finally just breaking down altogether.<br/>It was both really sad and really funny, but I didn't think I could have done it justice, so I went with this instead.</p><p>Also, I view both of the relationships implied here as platonic, but I'm aware that this can read otherwise and that's fine.</p></blockquote></div></div>
</body>
</html>